


maps of the world in its becoming

by moments_of_infinity



Category: The L Word
Genre: Depression, Suicide, Writing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-08
Updated: 2019-06-08
Packaged: 2020-04-12 15:12:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,395
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19134616
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moments_of_infinity/pseuds/moments_of_infinity
Summary: Jenny Schecter decides to read the writing on the wall. (e.g. Jenny decides to die.)





	maps of the world in its becoming

Jenny doesn’t even really understand what she’s doing when she starts. But it makes sense to her, in her own fucked-up kind of way. After all, she knows she’s already pushed most of her friends to the breaking point with her, so why not finish the puzzle? Hammer in the final pieces?

The hardest rope to break, of course, is the one with Shane. She loves Shane. More than she loves herself, although that really isn’t saying a lot. But she can’t truly tell you whether or not she’s actually _in love_ with her (has Jenny Schecter ever even been in love with anyone, she thinks? And then she remembers Marina, and the feeling of her fingers tracing the curve of her cheekbones like she was the most beautiful girl in the world, and she has her answer.) But she loves her. She loves Shane with with her entire heart. These veins, she writes, pump only for you. Love. Love.

The rest aren’t too hard. It’s easy to finish destroying relationships that never really existed in the first place. With Helena, especially, she finds it to be simple, almost a tick, a compulsion. An obsession with ruins. Maybe the thing she adores about ravaging is the rawness of it. The quick thought of killing that flashes across their eyes— a tick and compulsion as well, really.

One by one, her friends fall like dominoes. Her hands carry the strength to tear apart muscle and bone. There is an art to it, she finds, by the time she gets to Bette. She understands why the serial killers do it. The absolute thrill of seeing someone fall apart. For once, it is not her lying broken.

And then she realizes— she wants to die. And not in the way she ever thought she would when this day would inevitably arrive. Instead, her craving for death tastes like a ceremony. Like a beautiful funeral. Like a mystery and a curse. Like the most lovely thing she could ever imagine. She decides she’ll write and destroy until she simply can’t anymore. The idea of leaving, she supposes, is ecstasy in and of itself.

 

 

* * *

 

Jenny loves. Pillages. She doesn’t know any other way to do it. So she pulls out her computer one night, one night when Shane is gone and she’s almost sure she’s with Nikki, and begins typing:

Sometimes I think I’ve been dead for years. I look at the corpses and residue around me and the understanding that my hands could commit such heinous crimes reminds me that there is still depth to be found in the carcass of my ribcage, the dry well of my throat. I have been called empty too many times to count. I think I have only just learned how to love. 

 

It’ll have to be the night of the party, she decides. Yes. The night of the party. And she'll make a goodbye tribute video. The cherry on top.

* * *

She calls up her old haunts. First: Marina.

“Jenny.” Marina's voice still seduces her, even just over the phone. Sends a shiver down her spine that sits at the small of her back, waiting.

“Marina, hi,” she says quietly. Clears her throat. A beckoning, almost.

“What do you want?” Marina asks. A cold question, but there is warmth to be found in its hollow caverns, its barren walls. Jenny closes her eyes.

“Bette and Tina are moving to New York,” she replies. 

“Good for them. They will do great things there, I am sure.”

“Yes. Well, I was just calling because I wanted to make a goodbye video for them. You know, something they can take with them when they leave to remember all the people who still love them back home. Or- in your case- wherever the fuck you are.” It comes out a little sardonic. Jenny can’t help but feel proud of herself, this way that she has finally learned to give and take, take and give.

“That is very thoughtful of you, Jenny. You’ve always been thoughtful,” Marina says. It’s phrased almost as a question. _Thoughtful._

“Thank you, Marina. Anyway, if you could just record yourself giving them a nice message, you know, wishing them luck in their future and everything, that would be great. You can just email it to me.”

“I will.”

“Okay. Bye, then.”

She hangs up before Marina can respond. There is power, she is sure, in the weight of her fingers. In the confirmation that the next few days are all hers. The sureness of her leaving feels uncannily like a cigarette smoked on the back stoop after a long day of work.

* * *

She decides that if it’s done at the party, it has to be dramatic. Maybe even cause a controversy. After all, isn’t that what she’d been doing all this time? Pushing people away so she could die mysteriously and beautifully? Her heart swings between her ribs at the thought of dying. Of dying like a _writer._ Of causing so much trouble alive before causing a whole new kind even after she’s gone.

So a few days before the party, she prints out all her manuscripts, even a few poems, and lies them on top of her bed. Goes to Neiman Marcus and buys the most extravagant dress she can find. This, she thinks to only herself, is how someone who is tortured yet brilliantly talented would be found dead. Yes. Facedown in the pool. Her de la Renta dress spilling out around her like writing on the wall.

* * *

The video is her goodbye. She considers writing a note of some sort, but that would be too _obvious._ She wants to go in a way that’s different from how she’s lived the rest of her life. So often Jenny has worn her heart on her sleeve. This time, she decides, she'll keep to herself.

She falls asleep quickly the night before it all and dreams about becoming entangled, after her death, in mystery.

* * *

“I would never do anything to hurt your family, Bette. I love you. And I love Tina,” Jenny says. They’re standing on the balcony, her and Bette, the night a deep blue blanket sprawled out behind them. Below, the pool trickles softly with premonition.

“Well, that’s good to hear,” Bette replies. Her hands are on her hips. For a moment, Jenny thinks she’s going to kill her. But after a few more words, she steps away back into the bedroom. Jenny bows her head. Reaches down the deep v-line of her dress and pulls out a few pills. They lie almost tauntingly in her palm, resting there like some sort of comfort she never knew she could have.

* * *

Before everything, Jenny thought, then wrote, then acted. Now, Jenny acts, then writes, then thinks. Calculating in a new way, always computing after the deeds are done.

* * *

Marina once tried to kill herself while screaming Jenny’s name. Jenny can’t help but note the irony of this as she does it. Completely and utterly silently. Only the cool strands of breeze to whisper goodbye. She considers herself a part of McCarthy’s _The Road: “maps and mazes. Of a thing which could not be put back. Not be made right again. In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery.”_

* * *

The last manuscript she ever wrote was the story of the bearded lady. Of how she was beautiful in the intricate and obscene ways she was different, her ability to hide so readily behind her mask, the way she moved and breathed like a women but there was something else hiding in her stomach, in the deep caves of her cavities. The woman knew how to love more deeply and with more ferocity than the ringleader, the lion-tamer, the acrobats. And yet most of the time she was silent. Even when she was speaking, there was a quietness to the way she walked, an enigma in the same sense that sometimes no matter how much one talks, there is always a new wall to tear down. A circus freak, really, inside and out. A woman who, no matter what she said, always had another secret to pull up from her throat. Another story of pain and loss and love sitting like the juice of some sour, poisonous berry on the sandpaper of her tongue.


End file.
